Arthur De Vany's Evolutionary Fitness Art's Blog on Fitness, Health, Aging, Nutrition and Exercise

Preparing Meals

Cook by colour and texture so that meals look beautiful. If busy, skip meals with little worry. You don’t have to have three square meals a day. Snack on nuts or celery. Drink plenty of water, but only to thirst. I also drink tea, coffee and a little wine.

Carbs

Avoid bread, muffins, bagels, pasta, rice, potatoes, cereals, vegetable oils, beans or anything in a package — empty, high-calorie foods with a high carbohydrate content.

Flavor

Spice up your food with fresh ingredients such as basil, garlic, parsley, rosemary, spring onions, avocados and nuts, and use various oils, such as olive oil, for flavor.

Celery adds texture (and is good for testosterone too).

Fruits

Fresh fruits of all sorts are good; I focus on melon and red grapes. Fruit juice is out. I have one or two fruits with most breakfasts; now and then a piece with other meals.

Vegetables

Eat lots of fresh raw, steamed, sauteed or grilled vegetables. I never use frozen, canned or packaged vegetables.

Protein

Eat plenty of meat, such as ribs, steak, bacon, pork loin, turkey and chicken, but trim fat from the edges. Fish, seafood and eggs are also good choices.

Breakfast

I tend to eat last night’s leftovers: turkey with jarlsberg cheese and fruit, bacon with red grapes, omelettes with rosemary, olives and spring onions.

Lunches

Usually salads, with red cabbage, romaine lettuce, spring onions, garlic, kale, broccoli or cauliflower, with salmon, tuna, turkey, chicken, pork or steak.

Dinners

I sometimes eat a whole rack of ribs with salad and vegetables. Or a large steak, trimmed of fat. Almost always there is a beautiful salad and vegetables.

Vary Intake

Our ancestors lived with feast and famine. Research indicates that chronic or intermittent fasting improves health. I do it the easy way. Never chronically; your mind and body will not accept it. And you will lose vital lean body mass; muscle and organ mass. Easy intermittent fasting is skipping meals randomly and eating to fill later. I like to skip dinner now and then. Another variant is to have breakfast on a day when you plan a hike or travel on a plane and don’t eat the rest of the day.

It is best to be active when you fast so as to signal your genes to conserve protein (muscle mass). Being active also deepens the temporary negative energy balance of the intermittent fast. I think the research is pointing to transitory alternations between positive and negative energy balance as the underlying mechanism for the positive effects of fasting. For some individuals, this is the final tool needed to bring their fasting insulin down.

Preparation and Evaluation

There are several things you should do to prepare for the work out phase of Evolutionary Fitness that will also let you monitor your progress.

Check with your doctor. A few individuals have hidden heart problems. They are difficult to diagnose and some joggers or marathoners learn to their regret that they have hidden heart damage. Some do not live to regret it.

Ask for a metabolic panel from your doctor. Include your fasting insulin level if you can. If your insurance will not pay for it, I recommend that you have it done at your expense. The glucose tolerance test will show a pass even when you have elevated insulin. My insulin is at the bottom of the lab’s range. Insulin is the aging hormone; it says you can reproduce so your genes turn down maintenance. Discuss your triglycerides, HDL, and insulin with your doctor. Most tris come from your own body fat — obese individuals have high tris — or the liver.

Elevated insulin reduces fat oxidation and leaves you with high tris. Reducing insulin will permit you to access that fat you don’t want to carry. Lowering insulin reduces the metabolic syndrome and its ills. You will find your HDL rising, your insulin falling and the ratio of tris to HDL dropping. All good signs that your metabolic fitness is improving.

As you lose body fat, other hormones will improve, particularly testosterone. It is good for males and females. Body fat turns testosterone into estrogen. Obese males have as much estrogen as females, often more.

After you have your doctor’s clearance, check your waist measurement. The dangerous fat is hidden deep inside your visceral cavity beneath your stomach muscle. Imaging can detect it, but it is expensive and a waist measurement is a good indicator of visceral fat. Surface or subcutaneous fat is not as dangerous, but you want to lose it too. All fat makes you resistant to the action of insulin. Carbs push the cycle of elevated insulin, visceral fat, insulin resistance, more insulin and do on in a viscous cycle.

Don’t place much emphasis on your weight. I weigh a lot because of muscle mass. Muscle weighs more than fat. As you work out and eat the EF Way you will lose fat and gain muscle. It is your body composition that counts; more muscle, less fat. Women need not fear muscle; they have too little testosterone to become muscular. Muscle adds shape and tone to the body and it is your engine for your life.

Some individuals find that their insulin drops on EF but never quite falls below, say, 10 or so. They will find that last bit of improvement requires intermittent fasting of varying intensity. Why not do it anyway for its proven benefits?

If you find you are having slight fuzziness or brain fade on EF, this shows you are still insulin resistant and have rather elevated insulin. Have a bit of dark, low sugar chocolate when you feel this fade and never drive when you feel this way. Diabetics and pre-diabetics are prone to this problem. These issues will quickly resolve on EF, particularly if you begin the exercise to make your muscle sensitive to insulin and empty out all the excess nutrients trapped in your cells.

Vary Activity

When you vary energy expenditure you are altering gene expression and hormones. It is not the average activity that alters gene expression. It is the most intense activity that does it. Intense means challenging but not damaging. Never hurt your self. 80% of the benefits of a work out or sports activity come from 20% of the movements; the most challenging ones. Variation should be thought of in two ways: variation of the timing and intensity of the work out and variation in the level of intensity within a work out. That is why the hierarchical sets are so effective. By doing them you vary intensity, pace, and weight through out your exercise session.

What Not to do in the Gym

Stay off the treadmill. A waste of time and it wears down your hips and knees. It encourages poor posture. It builds only slow twitch capacity and little at that. Stay off the abdominal machines, especially those that twist and rotate your spine. Don’t do most stretches that are recommended for the back. Dr. McGill, the foremost spinal expert, says don’t do these things and my experience bears him out. Don’t count sets or reps; they have no meaning. Don’t take any advice from others, except to learn how to set up properly for an exercise. I can’t recommend the lat pull down on a cable; it over stretches the long lat muscles, tears their attachments at the waist, and murders the rotator cuff of your shoulder. Avoid machines that pull your arms too far from your body. Cable machines may cause an excessive pulling load when you let the weight down. Always lower weights at a smooth, controlled pace and a bit slower than you can raise them. Do not grind excessive sets on any exercise. It will wear you down and drop the intensity. Excessive sets turn your muscles into slow twitch fibers; you want those expensive fast twitch fibers. Men, in particular, go for big arms. They are ugly and excessive sets of curls waste time and deplete intensity.

What to do in the Gym

Learn the abdominal brace and to hold lordosis as you work out and as you walk. The brace is done by standing and bending forward at the hips to feel your back erector muscles contract, then hold the contraction and stand upright and press your stomach out. Out, not in. Your back is weaker if you suck your stomach in. Have fun, don’t let it be drudgery. Keep up the pace. Work out no more than 30 minutes. Move quickly between exercises. Start with the big upper back muscles, then move to other large groups like chest, hips, legs. Arms are not very important. Think symmetry. You want symmetry in your appearance; it is a reliable clue to health. It will make you look better. Improve your posture and symmetry and you will look and feel years younger. Lift your heart and look over your cheekbones when you stand and walk. Think symmetry front to back, side to side, and up to down. A symmetric body is beautiful and moves with grace.

Think symmetry in your exercise sequence. Do pulling and pushing movements. Do back muscles followed by chest muscles. Do outward moves followed by inward moves. Do positive moves followed by negative moves. This way you are exercising the agonist and the antagonist muscles, a key to balanced movement. It will stabilize and save your joints and the reciprocal inhibition response will relax your muscles. Always bend at the hips, not the spine. Do not make your spine act like a joint. Pivot at the hips holding lordosis in the spine. Aside from dead lifts off an elevated starting point, seated cable rows, and tilted lateral deltoid raises, there are almost no exercises that should cause you to bend over.

A Great Work for Beginners

All the exercises in this work out are done in the 15, 8, 4 sequence which I call the hierarchical work out. This work out style is a pure power law work out. It varies intensity over all the scales and muscle fiber types, hitting the ST, FTa, and FTb fibers (the slow, faster, and fastest fibers). Always begin with a very brief warm up and then move to large muscle groups. A 16, 8, 4 sequence is done by doing 15 repetitions with a lighter weight. Then with no rest increase the weight and do 8 reps. Then increase the weight again and do 4 reps. Each time go for a slight burn. Do not strain to do the last few reps. Never strain or go to failure. Do not clench or over grip the bar or grimace, it raises your blood pressure. Do not heave. Smooth movements are best. Lower more slowly than you raise the weight. Up a bit quicker than down is the rule. Move faster on the lighter part of the set and near the end of each sequence. Speed recruits more muscle mass. Strong contractions create quality muscles and stimulate your nervous system. Much of your initial strength gains will be from improved nervous system response. The nervous system has to learn how to coordinate your muscle contractions.

Warm up on a stationary bicycle for no more than 6 minutes. Begin at a moderate pace, then do a 10 second sprint, then pedal some more and then sprint again a bit harder. Do this 3 to 5 times and then pedal to bring your heart rate down.

Seated cable row or alternating, one armed, bent over dumb bell (DB) rows. As an alternate, use a seated row machine. I like the Keiser air machines for this.
Incline DB bench press or incline bench machine.

Leg curls and leg extension. On both curls and extensions, set the stops so you do not hyperextend the knee at the top or have your feet drop behind your knees. About 40 degrees of rotation is safe.
One legged leg presses on a safe machine.

Rotator cuff. Use what is called a core training machine with cables and handles. Rotate the shoulder with the pivot at your waist level. Do outer rotations and inner rotations.

Shoulder raises. There are many machines set up for this. Lift laterally in the 15, 8, 4 sequence. Make sure the pivot point is aligned with your shoulder. Do not raise your arms by lifting your shoulder, rotate at the shoulder while keeping it level. Do not lift too high, just to slightly above shoulder level. You will narrow the joint space if you lift too high.

Stomach crunches. Lie flat on the floor. Raise your shoulders off the ground. Do not bend the neck or use your hands to push it upward or you will harm it. Practice the ab brace as you lift this will increase the resistance.

Posture. End your work out by standing on a Bosu ball or just on the floor. Settle your weight onto your hips and balance through your hips and feet. Stand against a wall. Heels to the wall, shoulders and hips to the wall. Set the lordosis so you have a space between the wall and your lower back. Hold that posture as you leave the gym and look over your cheek bones, elevate your heart.
Do this twice a week to begin. Add a day of playful activity. If you walk and then add a little sprint to it, you will see dramatic results. I personally find that sprinting is enough to make me feel great and maintain all my muscle mass.

Do not eat or drink anything after a work out or during it. If you are thirsty, have a sip of water. The purpose of the work out is to raise your insulin sensitivity, to empty out those excess nutrients trapped in your cells, and to promote a hormonal response elevating your growth hormone. I like to take a bit of a walk after a work out or shoot baskets in the gym. You should leave the gym feeling fresh and with a sort of warm glow. If you leave tired, you over did it.

Every body over trains. Don’t do it. As you progress there are many advanced techniques available. Be patient. It will all happen. You have the rest of your life. Don’t rush it.